Top officials for the Food and Drug Administration laid out new requirements for access to updated COVID shots, saying they'd continue to use a streamlined approach to make them available to adults 65 and older as well as children and younger adults with at least one high-risk health problem.

In the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, scientists realized the virus was shed in high quantities in wastewater, even though COVID-19 is a respiratory disease. Now, multiple pathogens are tracked.

Groups that work to provide access to vaccines, especially for Black Georgians and others in underserved communities, are among those affected as the state Department of Public Health absorbs a $334.2 million loss from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As spring temperatures rise along with pollen counts in Georgia, the state is seeing a decline in winter respiratory infections.

Over $300 million in grants from the federal government to the Georgia Department of Public Health have been terminated, resulting in a reduction of staff and some services related to infectious disease surveillance. 

This month marks five years since the pandemic began, and here are 5 things that changed permanently.

Alabama is the only state where 4th-grade math scores are higher now than they were in 2019, before the pandemic. This is the story of how the state pulled it off.

Five years after the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic, there has been progress — and backsliding in the way the world responds to infectious disease.

They're pushing for more funding to find effective treatments. Researchers are finally starting to make headway but have a way to go.

The pandemic decimated the box office and the reshaped the moviegoing experience. NPR's movie critic, Bob Mondello, looks back on how his job changed during the early months of COVID-19.

The COVID-19 lockdown "felt like solitary confinement," a San Diego resident tells NPR. Even after many pandemic rules lifted, American society remains deeply fractured.

Respiratory viruses are beginning to decrease from a second winter peak in Atlanta and across Georgia, data indicate. 

It's an unusual winter for respiratory illnesses. The flu is peaking twice: once in early January and again in February. Meanwhile, it's the mildest COVID winter since the pandemic began.

Georgia hospitalizations for the three most common U.S. respiratory diseases have continued to decline, but updates from COVID-19 and influenza data sources suggest that might change in the coming weeks. 

As the new year begins, Atlanta and Georgia respiratory disease spread has accelerated to some of the highest levels seen this winter.